The country the world owes a favor

Reading the news items from my home country about a Parliamentary vote on Thursday has just reinforced my concerns that while we as Canadians consider ourselves open and 'of the world,' that in fact, a good percentage of the population really has no clue about the realities in the rest of the world. And it is idiots, like this twinkie pictured here, that I'm referring too. This dolt was a protester who had to be removed from Parliament because he was protesting against a Commons vote to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Thankfully, 198 of our Members of Parliament had enough sense to vote to extend the mission, compared to the 77 ideologues who would pander to the protesters for their votes, rather than trying to take a clear look at the situation that country has faced the last 30 years.

Afghanistan is wedged in what I would describe as a geographical and political no-man's land. In fact, I'm quite sure a lot of people here in China don't even realize that Afghanistan actually shares a border, albeit a small one, with their country. Hence why all the Afghanistan scenes in the recently-released (and already readily available in good quality DVD form here in China) film "The Kite Runner" were shot near Kashgar, in western Xinjiang. And to many Canadians, Afghanistan is just some place over there in the Middle East. And while a lot of people like to equate the ongoing conflict in that country to the widely reviled 'war on terror' of the Bush administration, the reality is that the world has simply neglected Afghanistan for far too long. A lot of people, especially the younger generation, have either forgotten or don't even know that Afghanistan was ground zero in the fight for dominance between the United States and the Soviet Union toward the end of the Cold War. For those unaware, in an effort to extend its influence toward the Middle East region, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the then-Marxist government in power in Afghanistan, which was facing stiff resistance from the Mujahideen. What resulted was a 9 year war between the Soviets and the CIA-backed Mujahideen fighters that eventually saw CCCP forces withdraw, eventually leading to enough discontent in Russia to spark the democratic revolution that led to the fall of the Soviet Union a few years later. And how was Afghanistan rewarded by the United States and its anti-communist allies for its role in all this? Neglect. After the Soviets withdrew, the world - including its large and border-sharing neighbor to the east China -- simply forgot about Afghanistan. I can sum this point up no better than in the final quote in the 2007 Academy Award nominated film "Charlie Wilson's War" (an excellent watch, by the way): 'We did a lot of great things in Afghanistan...then we fucked up the end game.' - Charlie Wilson. As such, ignorance of the country eventually let the zealots in the country take over, and led us to the situation that it's in today.

Nobody, especially me, likes the idea of war... but I say bravo to those Canadian MP's who voted to support the efforts to stabilize Afghanistan by keeping our troops there until at least 2011. And to the MP's and protesters who decided against it, I posit this thought: Let the Taliban retake control of the country, then plan your next overseas vacation there, because I would just love to see how well they would welcome and treat you as a non-radicalized Muslim guest!

I only hope that one day Afghanistan will become stable enough for me to feel safe visiting, because as a person who loves the past, I find that country -- the cross road between the West and the East -- a facinating place with a rich and often unknown history.